GMO labeling law could do less harm (and good) than expected

There has been much ado about genetically modified organisms in the
last days of the recently completed legislative session. Huzzahs and
celebrations from one side, gnashing of teeth from the other.

"It's law," proclaimed Gov. Peter Shumlin at a ceremony on the
Statehouse steps where he signed the bill requiring foods made with
GMOs to be so labeled.

"Vermonters will have the right to know what's in their food," Shumlin
exulted to supporters of the new law. "We are pro-information. Vermont
gets it right with this bill."

No it didn't, responded the apparently irate lobbyists and executives
of the grocery and biotech industries. Their message was equally
terse: "We'll sue."

And did nobody wonder whether either the celebration or the outrage
was worth all the fuss?

To start with, consider this list of the evidence that GMO-produced
food makes people sick:

That was it.

No, you didn't miss it. There isn't any.

Nor is there much convincing evidence that GMO crops degrade the
environment. Some scientists suspect GMOs could be one of several
causes of the recent decline of bee colonies. But so far this
suspicion is supported by conjecture, not data.

But GMO's benefits seem to be as overblown as its dangers. A U.S.
Department of Agriculture report issued earlier this year reported
that the data did not support claims that GMOs increase agricultural
productivity.

"In fact, the yields of herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant seeds
may be occasionally lower than the yields of conventional varieties,"
reported the Department's Economic Research Service.

As the bill's opponents claim, its passage could raise the price of
some products. The labeling alone will cost something, and that cost
is likely to be passed on the consumers.

But according to a study by two professors at the Dyson School of
Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University (and this is
one of the studies cited by opponents of the legislation) that cost
would be barely noticeable. Shoppers would really pay more, the study
said - perhaps hundreds of dollars a year more - as they rejected the
newly labeled GMO-produced foods and bought "non-GMO ingredients" or
organic products.

But the bill does not ban genetically modified foods. They will still
be on the shelves - labeled - waiting for buyers.

Who will apparently keep buying. More than 60 countries around the
world already require labeling of GMO products, which continue to sell
briskly in those countries.

In short, Vermont's new law - even if not overturned by the courts --
might end up doing far less good than its backers hope and far less
harm than its opponents fear.

So why the furor? Well, the biotech and grocery businesses don't want
to risk even a small loss of business. Besides, people who think they
are doing good for the world don't like to be told that they're doing
it harm.

And there's no doubt that these businesses think that GMOs are not
only profitable for their member corporations, but beneficial for the
world. A statement by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (at
whose annual convention former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton will deliver the keynote address next month) said that GMO
crops "have enabled farmers to produce more on less land with fewer
pesticide applications, less water and reduced on-farm fuel use."
As mentioned, less pesticide use. As not mentioned, considerably more
herbicide use. In this debate, as in so many others, each side picks
and chooses which (and whose) data to emphasize.

As to the ardor of the anti-GMO forces which guided the bill through
the Legislature, there is one easy explanation for their enthusiasm:
the public is overwhelmingly behind them. Sen. David Zuckerman,
P/D-Chittenden, said this was one of the few pieces of legislation in
his experience that stemmed from spontaneous public support less than
from established political organizations.

Zuckerman may have been overstating his case a bit. Vermont's
influential environmental and consumer groups helped mobilize support
for the bill. But that wasn't a hard job. By any measurement, GMO
labeling is the people's choice.

But why? If the labeling is unlikely to diminish the use of
genetically modified organisms, and if GMO produced foods have not
been proven to do any harm, what explains the intensity of those who
want to label them, and eventually abolish them?

Consider the possibility that opposition to GMOs is not just
opposition to GMOs, but is part of a broader reaction against what is
happening to farms and to food. The farmer was once America's
quintessential independent operative, or at least so it seemed
(actually, he never was, but that's a whole separate subject).

Government subsidies and corporate standardization long ago rendered
that image something of an anachronism, but GMO use completely
destroys it. The farmer who contracts with Monsanto to use its Roundup
herbicide also agrees to buy all seeds for his new crop from the
company, making him less an independent operative than a corporate
employee.

Meanwhile, the food system has become increasingly mass-produced and
standardized, and in the process often both less nourishing and less
tasty. To many people, GMOs are part of the general
"industrialization" of the food supply - the growth of processed
foods, so many of them chock-full of the fats, sugars, and salts that
help explain why so many Americans are overweight or even obese; the
spread of fast-food chains which promote "supersized" fatty (and
mostly dull) sandwiches and sugared drinks.

In reaction, more people are making greater efforts to buy what they
call "real food": vegetables and fruits grown locally (organically or
not); meat from steers which graze in pastures or chickens which eat
bugs in the barnyard instead of being kept in small boxes. All this
started as a tiny and rather elite minority. It remains a minority,
but no longer as tiny, and therefore no longer as limited to a
cultural elite.

That's because there's nothing elite about food. As Zuckerman said,
explaining the public support for the labeling bill, "food is basic."
Everybody has to eat, so it's no wonder that most people care about
what they eat. Were GMOs the only sign of the growing corporatization
of the food supply, they might not arouse so much concern. But they
are not, and so they do.

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